Along a stretch of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way where bars on the windows aren’t going out of style anytime soon, a little congregation met and prayed on Monday night, as it has every night in recent weeks.

Flanked by an entrance to Highway 24 and a liquor store, the Lighthouse Mosque opened its doors just before 9 p.m., and those who had just broken their daily fast trickled in to pray and hear a little piece of the Koran sung in Arabic.

Muslims in Oakland are in the last third of the month of Ramadan–its most intense part, as observers continue to fast during daylight hours, declining both food and water until the sun sets. Fasting can be more challenging when Ramadan falls during the summer months, as it does this year. Daylight, and with it the Islamic obligation to fast, lingers long in August.

Like the Christian observance of Lent, Ramadan is a period of spirituality, purification, and self-reflection. It’s also supposed to be philanthropic period, during which Muslims donate money or time to charitable purposes. Many Muslims decline to eat, drink, smoke, or have sex during daylight throughout the month. The obligation doesn’t extend to young children, or those who are pregnant, diabetic, or have other limitations.

“You definitely get hot and thirsty, but you learn to pace yourself,” said Jenny Mattheson, a Lighthouse Mosque member, about giving up food and water on hot summer days. “It’s really a wisdom, because when you’re fasting, you can’t spare the energy to get upset or get all worked up about something.”

The month of Ramadan is the ninth in the Islamic calendar, which is based on 12 lunar cycles. This lunar “year” is shorter than the earth’s rotation around the sun, and therefore Ramadan isn’t tied to a particular season. It happens a little earlier every year, beginning and ending with a new moon.

At Lighthouse, the congregation is ethnically diverse. Blond Nordic types pray alongside those of Asian and African descent. However, most have at least one thing in common.

“Our mosque is probably 90 percent converts,” said Abdul Latif Finch, the imam here. Many, including Finch, are Americans who were raised in other faiths and still have non-Muslim family members. Evidence for its members’ local heritage piles up in the doorway as people arrive: Crocs, Converse All-Stars, flip-flops and Adidas, cell phones and eco-friendly BPA-free water bottles.

Unlike other mosques in the area, which often cater to a single ethnicity or nationality, Lighthouse services are held in both English and Arabic. The mosque’s few hundred members—men, women, and children—pray together in the same small, cream-colored room. “There are no barriers out there, so why would there be in here?” Finch said.

Lighthouse is three years old, but it replaces another mosque, Masjid al-Iman, which outgrew the small space and moved to Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. Finch, 35, was in the first class of graduates from the newly-established Zaytuna College, an Islamic seminary in Berkeley.

On Monday, there’s no food, only a little socializing and “Tarawih,” the singing of one thirtieth of the Koran’s thirty parts. Lighthouse worshippers break their daily fasts together only on the Saturdays during Ramadan. Other days they eat at home, after the sun sets.

Before Tarawih, a few members of the Lighthouse mosque met early, sitting on the carpeted floor and reflecting on what makes Ramadan valuable to them.

“A sense of intimacy and closeness, because everybody’s fasting together,” said Mattheson. She smiled and turned to Finch, the imam, who had been quietly listening. She pointed mischievously.  “Now you!” she said.

Finch’s answer reflected his recent trips to the East Coast and Arizona for various speaking and teaching engagements. “It’s not just happening here, this sense of heightened spirituality, where people aren’t feeding the base self,” Finch said. “It’s the same thing in Pennsylvania, the East Coast, the desert southwest.”

“The whole entire community across the globe, there’s a real beauty to that,” added member Ally Alexander.

“Fasting also really makes you appreciate the fact that you have access to fresh, clean drinking water and great food,” Mattheson later wrote in an email. “And makes you much more empathetic for the people who don’t.”

Ramadan begins with the appearance of a new moon. Some Islamic traditions calculate its arrival mathematically, while others rely on local sightings with the naked eye. The month begins when someone—any member of any age from any mosque—sees the first sliver of new moon. Each community determines how and when its members will begin observing.

Before this Ramadan began, some worshippers from Lighthouse headed to the hills to try to spot the new moon firsthand, getting away from the city’s light pollution and looking out into the sky from the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. The first night they went, before predictions suggested the moon would be visible, it was also too foggy. “The next day we could see it,” Finch said, and for Lighthouse, Ramadan began.

But this year’s observance has encountered some awkward timing. The month of self-denial is usually followed by a big three-day party, called Eid al-Fitr. “Eid, that’s more like Christmas,” said Zahra Billoo, director of the Bay Area chapter of Council for American-Islamic Relations. “Ramadan is more like 30 days of Thanksgiving. You’re doing a lot of reflecting and introspection.”

However, the last day of Ramadan 2010 could fall on September 10^th, depending on when the new moon appears.  Some in Muslim leadership worry that celebrating anything on September 11^th could be misconstrued.

“The idea is all you need is one video of someone smiling on 9-11 and you have the potential for backlash,” said Billoo, explaining some Muslims’ anxiety.

Eid’s also arriving on the tail end of a stream of anti-Islam incidents nationwide, including a brick thrown through the window of a mosque in Madera, California, the stabbing of a Bengali Muslim cab driver in New York, various attacks on Muslims in the South Bay, and the well-publicized protests of the construction of a community center near Ground Zero in New York City.

“We always have to be careful about how others perceive us,” said Jason Hamza Van Boom, a spokesman for the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in Oakland. “On the other hand, during Ramadan, we’re able to concentrate on the spirituality and focus on prayers and community togetherness.” Van Boom added that there had been discussion by several clergy to make this year’s Eid celebration on September 11 into a day of national unity and healing across faiths.

“The current wave of nativist xenophobia is certainly grating, but it’s clearly coming from a fringe of nut cases and Klu-Kluxer types,” wrote Rashid Patch in an email to Oakland North. Patch directs the Alalusi Foundation, a non-profit fund for international humanitarian aid.

“Well, during Ramadan, besides giving up food, drink, smoking, and sex during daylight hours, Muslims are also supposed to give up getting angry,” he wrote, explaining the attitude he tries to maintain, despite concern over anti-Muslim sentiment.

He noted that, as a counterbalance to an anti-Muslim element, there’s been a lot of interfaith support coming from Christians and Jews, and interfaith dinners have been held across the Bay Area. Patch said he’d been to one on Sunday at Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley and another will be held at the Berkeley United Methodist Church on Saturday, September 4.

And as with any observance based on community and eating together, Ramadan is observed with traditional foods. Many break their daily fasts with a small bite, perhaps some milk and dates.   Then comes prayer and a larger meal, sometimes shared with relatives or the entire congregation.

Persians and Turks commonly have soups made from lamb, bean, and grain, Patch wrote, while North Africans may eat lentils and barley.

“Every Muslim grandmother from West Africa to the China Sea has at least three recipes for a special soup for breaking fast in Ramadan, and every single recipe is the only real, authentic one for the special Ramadan soup,” he wrote.

For Lighthouse members, it’s a bit different. Its communal meals reflect the cross-section of its constituency.

“You have your cornbread with your chapatti,” said member Ally Alexander. A recent meal included chicken and macaroni and cheese—Oakland soul food.

Ramadan meals, called “iftar,” are publicly available throughout the month in Oakland. On Wednesday, Masjid Al-Islam in East Oakland had a chicken and waffles night, according to Mattheson, and the Oakland Islamic Center in North Oakland has free food every night. Lighthouse has free meals Saturday nights.

If you want to ride with the scraper bike king, you better wear a helmet.  Tyrone “Baybe Champ” Stevenson Jr., known around Oakland as the “king” and creator of the scraper bike movement, announced his new rule of the road Saturday near Oakland City Hall.

“Everybody is riding without a helmet, but once they see us wearing them more frequently then it will be cool,” said Stevenson Jr., who now requires anyone who rides with him to wear a helmet.  “They’re going to start pimping them out just like our bikes.”

About thirty riders showed up with their tricked-out bicycles as part of a bike ride and festival organized by Stevenson.  After a safety talk from the Oakland Department of Traffic Safety, the group rode—with their bike helmets—to Arroyo Viejo Park for a day of food and music.

The event was the latest of about twenty over the past three years organized by Stevenson and his group, Original Scraper Bikes.  Last year, hundreds of riders circled Lake Merritt to take a stand against gun violence.  Saturday’s theme was bike safety, a mission that Stevenson is taking on with Oakland Parks and Recreation.  With funding from the city, he has given out 250 free bike helmets at parks around Oakland. The helmets are white—all the better for riders to customize just like their bikes.

“These young men and women don’t have the appropriate safety equipment,” said Stacey Perry, of the Oakland Department of Traffic Safety.  “They think helmets look kind of dorky. They’re beautiful bikes, so we came up with the idea of letting them decorate their helmets.”

Most riders Saturday agreed that if you have foil on your rims, there is little chance of seeing a helmet on your head.

“No one wears helmets in East Oakland,” said Jamesha Creer, Stevenson Jr.’s cousin.  “They don’t want to because it cramps your style.  It’s good that he’s promoting safety.  They’ll follow what he does.”

Stevenson is credited with inventing the scraper bike: a customized bicycle decorated with cheap materials like aluminium foil and food wrappers.  Riders at Saturday’s event showed up with foil, Cheetos bags and even beer cans on their spokes.  Stevenson said he would love to see Oakland bikers channel their creativity from their rims to their helmets, but, he said, “They have to wear them, customized or not.”

All photos by Carl Nasman except for the third picture in the slideshow, which was taken by Teresa Chin.

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Are you just about done with all the summer squash coming out of your garden? Or been eyeing the neighbor’s plum tree, wishing you had some of your own? There’s a bench in North Oakland’s Mosswood Park where you can trade away your excess harvest and pick up something else you like.

The Mosswood plant and produce exchange offers a space for neighbors to barter herbs, fruits, vegetables, seeds and plants with their fellow gardening buffs. Several members of the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association organize the weekly, Saturday morning exchange, which began just a month ago. Already, there are big ideas for the future.

“We hope it’ll get bigger and some day be a farmers market-type thing,” said Karen Hancock, one of the organizers.

Participants in the Mosswood produce exchange discuss the items up for barter.

For now, the exchange is refreshingly informal. Shortly after 11 a.m. on July 3, Hancock and three other gardeners sat in the patio of the abandoned building adjacent to the Mosswood community garden, offering donut holes to incoming exchangers. Along the garden side of the building, a long wooden bench served as the barter table. Jars of dried herbs flanked a wooden tray displaying green beans and two types of squash. There were bags of plums, snap peas, homemade potpourri sticks, and even a jar of vinegar made from the popular fermented drink, kombucha.

Two more women walked in with a bag of lettuce, a handful of lavender stems and some squash blossoms. Soon, everyone was out of their chairs and perusing the items on the bench. Gloria Bruce, who recently moved to the neighborhood with her wife, examined the potpourri sticks.

“I’d be happy to trade you one for some squash blossoms,” said Diana Young, who made the sticks, along with the kombucha vinegar, and a tangy sauerkraut that she later spread on crackers for the exchangers to sample. Done deal. The two women swapped their wares.

The exchanging went on casually among talk of gardening and neighborhood happenings.  Soon, Theresa Halula walked in and plopped down a shallow, blue bucket full of pepper and tomato seedlings—extras from a friend who owns a nursery. Minutes later, she and Hancock left the marketplace and began preparing the dirt in a nearby garden bed, to plant some of the seedlings. Hancock, who’s been unemployed for a year, plans to start gardening the raised bed with local teens.

In fact, the actual exchanging of produce is just one part of the weekly event.

“Even if there’s not a lot of produce getting exchanged, we’re getting together and talking about things,” said A.J. Benham, who’s a nurse practitioner.

“It’s nice to organize around something positive,” said Andrea Snedeker, who chairs the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association.

“Yeah,” agreed Benham.

“Not fighting against anyone,” added Snedeker, who described herself as “very vocal” in community affairs.

Karen Hancock (left) and Theresa Halula (right) do some impromptu gardening at the exchange.

Talk wandered from gardening tips to the nearby Kaiser expansion. Hancock handed out fliers for two upcoming trainings on emergency preparedness. Soon it was well past the two hours allotted for the exchange. The remaining participants began to divvy up the unclaimed produce.

“Does anyone want these last snow peas that are left?” asked Hancock.

“I’ll trade you for the green beans,” said Benham. Done.

Ultimately, Hancock said, she hopes to organize the neighborhood’s backyard gardeners and get them more involved in the community garden at Mosswood. She’s also thinking about organizing garden work exchanges, where neighbors volunteer to help each other out with pruning, weeding or other garden chores.

“I never thought of myself as a community organizer, but that’s what I’m doing,” said Hancock, who, after a year of unsuccessful job hunting, is thinking about retiring at her 61 years of age. A barter-style Mosswood farmers market may be coming soon after all.

The Mosswood plant and produce exchange happens every Saturday from 11 am to noon at the Mosswood community garden, on the corner of Webster Street and MacArthur Boulevard.

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It’s hard to catch Steve Sparkes these days between World Cup games, building a tasting room at Linden Street Brewery in West Oakland, and organizing a week-long free soccer camp for over sixty kids. Sparkes’ morning schedule during camp week—held June 21 to 25—goes something like this: Wake up to watch the 4 am World Cup game, then catch as much of the 7 am game as possible before rushing off to the Oakland Technical High School field to greet the campers at 9 am.

Now in its third year, the “My Yute” soccer camp offers skills training to young players, while exposing them to the cultural diversity of the game and spreading, Sparkes hopes, his passion for the sport. Sparkes is so committed to the camp that he gave up tickets to this year’s Cup in South Africa in order to keep the camp dates consistent with the first two years—the first week of summer. But he’s developed a strategy to catch as many games as possible on TV.

“My truck is all packed [with equipment] and ready, so I don’t have to do much to set up the field,” Sparkes said seriously as he outlined his plan recently at the Commonwealth Café and Public House in North Oakland. “Then I do the camp, and when it’s over I can catch the second half of the third game somewhere,” said Sparkes.

The Jamaican-born, longtime Oakland resident admitted the schedule was exhausting, but how else could he satisfy the many facets of his passion for soccer—playing, watching, and introducing Oakland youth who otherwise might not have access to the beautiful game? “Someone said to me, ‘What’s wrong with you?’” he recalls. “I said ‘I have the fever.’”

The way he describes it, Sparkes has had the fever since birth—first playing soccer with other kids in front of his family’s home in Trench Town, the West Kingston neighborhood famous for producing Bob Marley, but also for its violence and poverty. Later, he played for the Cavaliers in Jamaica’s national soccer league, then for Bay Area A Division teams, the San Jose Pumas, Foster City FC, and now Africari—all the while engaging in impromptu pickup games wherever in the world they’re to be found.

“Soccer is a language,” said Sparkes, who traveled extensively, and played with the locals, during his more than 20 years working as ground crew for United Airlines. “You change a lot of stigma by playing with people in different places,” he said.

With all those years playing on all those different fields, Sparkes’s fondest soccer memories come from his childhood street, Unity Lane. “It’s kind of a corny story,” said Sparkes with a chuckle, as he launched into a tale that one can imagine takes place in narrow, urban streets and empty lots all across the soccer-crazed countries of the world.

Kids of all ages from different neighborhoods would come to play soccer together on Unity Lane, detached from the political violence and economic hardships that plagued Jamaica in the late 1960s and 1970s (and still do today). Other kids wou

ld hoist themselves up onto a ledge on the wall outside Sparkes’ grandparents’ house on 4 Unity Lane to watch games being played on the street below—an ideal makeshift field complete with spectator seating. “They call it the grandstand,” said Sparkes.

Add a nearly unfathomable patience from the adults in Sparkes’s household for yelling, scuffling children, and the spot became what he calls “the community center.”

“I had such a beautiful childhood,” said Sparkes, who’s now 46 years old, tall and athletic. “I wanted to create the same thing here.”

On a long flight back to California after watching the 2006 World Cup in Germany, he decided to do it. Sparkes went to his fellow players at the Africari soccer club and asked them to help him set up a free soccer camp for East Bay

Campers split up into World Cup teams to play a mock tournament on Wednesday.

youth from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. He quickly got a group behind the idea, and they began raising money to make it happen.

“I created a set of hats and shirts and started selling them to my friends to raise money,” said Sparkes. He also asked friends for donations and held fundraisers.

The My Yute camp teaches kids aged 6 to 12 the fundamentals of soccer and, with equal focus, says Sparkes, diversity and healthy living. Along with shooting and passing skills, the camp sprinkles in education on nutrition and different cultures. “A small part of it is soccer,” Sparkes said of the camp. “It’s about life.” The coaches are all volunteer, many of them Sparkes’ soccer buddies.

“My yute” is a Jamaican term used among friends or toward young people, something like “my boy” or “brother.” The name fits the warm, non-competitive style of the camp.

This week, kids enrolled in the camp did drills and played scrimmages. On Wednesday, the entire camp played a mock World Cup tournament, complete with t-shirts from this year’s competing countries. The week culminates with lunch catered by a chef who will talk about nutrition with the campers.

Kai Blackwood and Cava Menzies, parents who both have 6-year-olds attending the camp, chatted on the sidelines the first day of practice. “I think it’s a great opportunity to introduce her to the game,” said Blackwood of her daughter, Nina. “It’s a great, no pressure environment.”

Both Blackwood and Menzies found out about the camp via word of mouth, which seems to be My Yute’s modus operandi. Sparkes employs his network of friends—especially those who are teachers and coaches—throughout Oakland to identify kids who might be interested in the camp and, if necessary, help parents fill out the application form.

Blackwood and Menzies, whose children both go to Cleveland Elementary School, east of Lake Merritt, said they were thankful the camp is free and, given the lack of similar opportunities, were surprised their kids got a spot.

Campers file through the victory line after the tournament.

In fact, Sparkes said he hasn’t yet turned down an application for the camp, and thanks to a large group

of volunteers, the camp maintains a daily ratio of around 8 players to one coach. Many of the coaches also play for teams in the Africari soccer club, and some coach youth leagues in the area.

“This is what I love to do, giving my time for a program like this,” said Glenn Van Straatum, who directs coaching for the elite Bay Oaks youth soccer club and the Jack London Youth Soccer Sports League, and volunteers at the My Yute camp.

From the beginning, Sparkes’s vision was to hold a high quality soccer camp with coaches like Van Straatum, and he wanted to provide access to those coaches to kids from Oakland’s diverse neighborhoods and backgrounds, regardless of their ability, or lack of, to pay for training.

“People said, ‘Why don’t you create a camp in West Oakland?’ But that’s not what I wanted to do,” Sparkes said. His goal, rather, was to ignore socioeconomic status, not cater to kids with low ones.

My Yute attracts players from neighborhoods as diverse as East and West Oakland, Piedmont, Montclair and Rockridge. “The idea is to bring them together for one week, and take the money out of it,” said Sparkes. “I never felt like I was locked out [of soccer] because my parents didn’t have money.”

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case in this country. Soccer, like many youth sports, can be rough on parents’ pocketbooks. Registration fees for Oakland leagues run around $100 to $200 a season for recreational play, plus the cost of uniforms and gear. If your child gets serious about the game, tournament costs come in—travel and sometimes hotels—plus the option of intensive, and expensive soccer camps. Meanwhile, “everywhere else in the world, kids play in the street,” said Sparkes.

In big soccer nations, like Brazil, The Netherlands and other European and Latin American countries, clubs recruit young players and pay for them, not the other way around.

Van Straatum, who’s from Suriname, grew up playing in the Dutch soccer system, in which clubs fund training for young, promising players by selling their stars to professional teams. “The goal is to sell one or two or three players a year for $1 million each, and that’s how the youth program gets paid for,” he said.

My Yute is not looking to make stars. “Parents want their kids to go and perform, and be the next Pelé,” Sparkes said of other camps. “This camp is not going to create the next Pelé.”

Sparkes does, however, hope to spread some of his zeal for soccer to Oakland youth, and eventually expand the program to other parts of the Bay Area.

He’d also like to raise scholarship money for talented players who can’t afford to join the top clubs. But Sparkes is struggling just to pay for field rental, snacks and equipment for this year’s one week of camp. He encourages kids to take a ball home at the end of the week, while extra balls, and sometimes uniforms, get donated to kids in Jamaica, or this year, Peru.

Ultimately, Sparkes’s dream is a simple one: “Twenty years from now, I want to be sitting on the island [Jamaica], and I would just love to have my phone ring and have a kid call and say, ‘You know, I want to do a camp like yours. Can you help me out?’ That would be my greatest dream.”

If you’d like to donate to My Yute or find out more about the program, check out their website: MyYuteSoccer.org.

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Imagine a city with blue skies and clear roads, populated by healthy people commuting on quiet, non-polluting buses. That’s how the business magazine Fast Company envisions the perfect city, and it’s borrowing some ideas from Oakland.

Fast Company recently highlighted AC Transit’s alternative fuels program as part of its yearly “Fast Cities” list of the best in urban innovation. AC Transit is based in Oakland and covers Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

“What Oakland is doing with zero-emission public transportation is just amazing,” said Jocelyn Hawkes, special projects editor for Fast Company, which is based in New York City. “I wish even Manhattan could take a page from that book.”

Since 2005, Fast Company has compiled an annual list of the top cities to live and work in the United States—this year with a spotlight on social entrepreneurship and sustainable business. The 2010 list of 12 great ideas cultivated in as many U.S. cities was published in the magazine’s May issue.

Along with Oakland, Austin, Texas was chosen for its car-share program for city employees, Boston, Massachusetts for its commitment to securing housing for artists, and San Francisco for its policy of sharing public information with software developers.

On Tuesday morning, Fast Company hosted a breakfast in downtown Oakland to showcase some of the best ideas in town for a sustainable metropolis, including AC Transit’s Alternative Fuels Policy and Marketing program.

Other featured guests from Oakland’s business community included First Solar, the world’s largest maker of thin film photovoltaic solar modules, Revolution Foods, which cooks up healthy school lunches for Bay Area schools, and the nonprofit Ella Baker Center, a pioneer in the green jobs movement. Siemens Industry, which is building zero-emission light rail vehicles in Sacramento, sponsored the event.

The breakfast was held in a small conference room at the Washington Inn in downtown Oakland. Around 40 guests—many of them Oakland-based social entrepreneurs—exchanged business cards and chatted about their respective ventures before the featured companies began their presentations.

“It’s an opportunity to see what’s working,” Hawkes said of the event, “and what other cities can learn from.”

AC Transit currently has three electric buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells running routes in Oakland. The only thing coming out of their tailpipes is water vapor. They’re so quiet that transit authorities tried attaching Tibetan bells to the buses to alert waiting riders of their approach. (But the buses didn’t vibrate enough to make the bells ring.)

The public transportation agency plans to add 12 new fuel cell buses to its fleet by the end of the year, according to Jaimie Levin, AC Transit’s alternatives fuels director. If used to replace diesel buses, each fuel cell bus could keep 120 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere every year.

AC Transit’s hydrogen fuel cell program has caught flak in recent years from some alternative energy and public transportation advocates who say the technology is too costly for widespread use. They say precious funds should go toward expanding public transit and use of cheaper clean technologies.

But Levin was quick to point out Tuesday morning that the program is funded entirely with federal, state and regional grants and private partnerships, not with the agency’s operating funds. “Our users are not interested and cannot afford to pay the cost of pursuing this esoteric technology,” he said. AC Transit has raised over $75 million in grants for the program.

AC Transit has also become the first public transit agency in California, and one of the first in the nation, to join The Climate Registry (originally called the California Climate Registry)—the precursor, proponents hope, to an eventual North American carbon cap and trade system. The Climate Registry is a nonprofit collaboration among over 200 government agencies, corporations and Native Sovereign Nations in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. It sets standards for calculating and reporting greenhouse gas emissions and compiles emissions data from participants into a single registry.

Levin said having certified, accurate information about carbon emissions helps establish the agency’s green agenda when applying for grants, and someday AC Transit might be able to sell carbon offsets from its emission-reduction programs. But the main objective is simply to start keeping track of the agency’s emissions, he said, because someday they might have a cost.

“We have to start accounting for what we’re producing,” said Levin. “Although no politician wants to live up to it, the only way to impact carbon demand is by charging for it.”

Other speakers at the Fast Company breakfast rounded out the magazine’s picks for good ideas for a healthy, sustainable future. James Cook, Director of Business Development at First Solar, spoke of the 550-megawatt solar power plant that the company is building on former farmland near San Luis Obispo.

First Solar established its California headquarters in Oakland last year, and now employs 55 people at its downtown office. The company makes solar modules mostly for use on commercial buildings and solar energy farms.

Cook said his and many other solar companies have flocked to California in recent years, attracted by the state’s greenhouse gas reduction and renewable energy mandates.

Plus, said Cook, who grew up in Piedmont, Oakland has become a good place to do business. “There’s great value in first class office space,” he said. “There’s great restaurants here. It’s close to the talent of Silicon Valley.”

Ian Kim, the director of the Ella Baker Center’s Green Collar Jobs Campaign, spoke in glowing terms of the economic potential of green industry, proven, he said, by its performance during the current recession. “The green economy was the last to freeze and has shown itself to be the first to thaw,” said Kim.

In fact, revenues in the solar industry—one of the pillars of green industry in California—grew 36 percent in 2009, according to the industry group Solar Energy Industries Association. California had more solar capacity installed last year than anywhere in the nation.

In the Bay Area, 130,000 people are employed in the green economy, according to the California Employment Development Department, and California has a total of 600,000 green jobs.

The Ella Baker Center helped set up the Oakland Green Jobs Corp, which began training workers in 2008 in areas like solar installation and retrofitting buildings for greater energy efficiency. Though not all graduates are finding jobs in these tough economic times, Kim called the results of the program’s first few years “decent.”

Of the 84 students who completed green jobs training at the Cyprus Mandela Training Center in West Oakland, one of the Green Jobs Corp partner centers, 54 have been placed in full-time positions, according to Art Shanks, executive director of the center.

The challenge, said Kim from the Ella Baker Center, is to ensure green jobs are good paying, stable and available to minority and disadvantaged residents who need them. “How do we ensure that the full diversity of Oakland and California are not just trying to catch up or keep up with the climate gap, with the green divide, but are actually a core part of leading the green revolution that we all need to invest in?” asked Kim reflectively.

A threat to California’s green industry potential, said Kim, will appear on the ballot in November. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced that an initiative to repeal the State’s greenhouse gas reduction law, Assembly Bill 32, gathered enough signatures to reach the polls. The initiative would delay implementation of AB 32 until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent, from its current 12 percent, for four consecutive quarters.

“Our jobs and our economy today depend not on pulling the plug on California’s green economy, but actually investing more deeply in the kind of solutions we’re hearing about today,” said Kim. “We can’t do that if we lose the California Global Warming Solutions Act [AB 32].”

A presentation by Revolution Foods closed the event. Revolution Foods prepares and delivers 17,000 healthy, all-natural school lunches every day for Bay Area schools—mostly charter schools and small public districts. The company employs over 100 people in Oakland at its culinary center off of Hegenberger Road.

The drive behind Revolution Foods comes from the nation’s alarming childhood obesity rate, said Ben Cain, general manager of the company’s Bay Area operations. “We never want to stray from our mission of providing healthy food,” said Cain. “In the Bay Area, we’ve been able to find investors who share that passion and share that mission.”

Cain said around 80 percent of meals sold by Revolution Foods go to low-income students who quality for free or reduced lunch. Still, he conceded that the company’s price is out of reach for many larger school districts, which maintain their own kitchens and staff for preparing meals.

“If [schools] can save money on food and put that to another teacher, that’s a hard decision for them to make,” Cain said. Still, he said the company has been able to leverage its growth to form partnerships with suppliers willing to provide quality products at cost.

In the audience, other social entrepreneurs shared a vision of Oakland’s future as a nexus for socially responsible business. “I think Oakland has great potential,” said Baba Afolabi, who is soon to launch an Oakland-based clothing business with a mission to “embody multiculturalism,” according to its website.

“But you have to make money,” said Afolabi, who’s originally from Nigeria. “And then the money will trickle down into better education for the youth, and into taking care of our elders. I hope the leaders in the city are working toward that.”

Check out the other cities highlighted by Fast Company.

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The Oakland lawn bowling club has been rolling on the greens at Lakeside Park for nearly a century. The game dates from 13^th century England, and was played by the likes of Sir Francis Drake and Henry VIII.

In Oakland, the game’s popularity has dwindled. But every Tuesday and Thursday, loyal bowlers meet at the clubhouse, unpack their bowls, and hit the greens.

You can hear other audio podcasts on Oakland North Radio.

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April 25-26, 2010. We sent ten reporters out with their cameras, and invited community members to help us capture images of a day in the life of the city. Work and play, rest and motion: Just an ordinary 24 hours in Oakland. There will never be another one exactly like it.

Click here to see the 24 Hours in Oakland photo project.

Gerald A. Simon

Although sometimes fire season is announced as early as April, since it has been a rainy winter and spring, the Oakland Fire Department is announcing it late this year. But with the rains ending and the land drying out, the department will officially announce the beginning of fire season within the next couple of weeks. Fire Chief Gerald A. Simon is overseeing this department to prepare for the upcoming summer and ensure that Oakland’s residents are safe from fire.

Oakland North reporter Dara Kerr spoke with Chief Simon about what it means to be the fire chief of Oakland and what led him to the job.

Q: What is the role of a fire chief?

First of all, I’d like to say that I’m exceedingly proud to be the Fire Chief of the City of Oakland. I find Oakland to be a very special and unique city and I’m very grateful to have had to opportunity to serve this community.

Photo courtesy of the Oakland Fire Department.

The role of the Fire Chief has a number of different elements. First and foremost is that I am responsible for protecting the 410,000 lives of the people that live in the city of Oakland. I’m also responsible for the life safety of the people who visit, recreate and shop in Oakland. It is my job to protect them from fire, emergency medical complications, terrorism threats, and a number of different things that might compromise their safety

The second element is to lead the 550 members of the fire department, the men and women who work here. That leadership involves helping them craft a mission (what we do), a vision (where we need to go), the values (our moral compass) and our goals (what we need to achieve) in order to be a world-class fire department. It’s also my responsibility to give them the tools and equipment that they need and make sure they do their job, and do it safely. And most importantly, my job is to do all that I can to train them in order to get them home safely to their families and loved ones at the end of the workday.

A third responsibility that I have is to make sure Oakland is as safe a city as we can make it. We also need to be a city that cares about each other. Toward that end, we have a number of community based fire services programs that we put in place to make sure our Oakland residents are both educated and informed about how to protect themselves in cases of disasters and emergencies. We also have programs such as the Random Acts of Kindness program, holiday food giveaway program, and a charity fund that demonstrate our caring side.

Q: How long have you been a fire chief?

I’ve been a fire chief for about 14 years. I was first a chief in Santa Clara, then in Oakland. I actually retired for a while. I then got a call to be the interim Fire Chief in Union City for a while. Retired a bit more then got a call to be the interim Fire Chief in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I retired again for a while and then Mayor Dellums honored me with a call and asked if I would help him lead the fire department through some very difficult and challenging economic and budget times. I came back to Oakland in October of 2008 and I continue to serve now. I have been in the fire service for a total of 33 years.

Q: Can you talk some about your upbringing in San Francisco and how you got to where you are today?

I was born in San Francisco. I was born into a very modest background. We lived in the Potrero Hill housing projects in my early life. We moved to Ocean View when I was in kindergarten. It was a very challenging time for our family because my dad was sick for many years. Looking out over the landscape of my life, at one point I didn’t think that I’d live past the age of 20. In terms of non-parental role models, I had two people who really took me under their wings in high school; one was a football coach, the other was an English teacher. They steered me in the right direction, and helped me get to college.

I’m very proud that my mom and dad believed in me, they stuck with me even when life was hard. My dad got better from his illness and eventually became a supervisor, then a manager. I am proud that my dad achieved good things in his life. My mother was always there to help guide our family.

The people at my high school taught me to set goals, to believe in myself, not to quit and never to give up. They also taught me that in all things that I do in my life, to be a person for others. My dad also taught me never to quit no matter what. I still live a lot of those philosophies in my life today. I readily look for challenges, set goals and seek opportunities to serve. I always try to serve to the best of my ability.

I think in the earlier parts of my life set an important foundation. We didn’t have a lot of money and we had to make due with what we had. We stuck together as a family and made it through some extremely challenging times. I’m really happy that today, despite those challenges, I serve proudly as a Fire Chief of Oakland.

When I talk to young kids who are struggling in their lives, I tell them my story, I talk about my background and I tell them that, like me, they can be anything they want to be if they just put their mind to it. Above all else, believe in yourself. I think they also have other great role models to emulate like President Obama. I have heard our president preach many of those same philosophies; being strong, live out the conviction of your values and don’t quit. I think all of these are great messages that we can give our young people today.

Photo courtesy of the Oakland Fire Department.

Q: What first got you to work in the fire department?

My story is not a typical fire department story. I went to Santa Clara University; I applied for a government scholarship to go to law school. Three weeks before the semester started they told me the program was running out of money and that they had lost funding, so they cut much of my scholarship. I couldn’t afford to go to law school at that point. A priest friend of mine told me to look into the fire service. I got interested in it and started to pursue it.

That’s what got me into the fire service, but what got me hooked on the fire service was the very first time I saved someone’s life. I used my emergency medical training, my two hands and my skill to save a young man’s life. Although it happened 34 years ago, I remember it like yesterday. He was 26 years old, and was driving a motorcycle and crashed into a fence. By standers put a blanket over his head because they thought he was dead. Twenty minutes later I had him talking to me about what happened, six hours later he was in surgery, and three weeks later he me brought two pounds of See’s candy to say thank you for saving his life. This was the first time I ever saved anyone’s life and I have been hooked on this career ever since.

Q: The Oakland Fire Department is known for its diversity. What does that mean for you?

We have people who come to Oakland from all over the world, from all over the United States. One of the things I absolutely love and value about Oakland is our diversity—the people, the culture and the lifestyle. All these things come together to make Oakland one of the most phenomenal places on the planet. It’s also important that our fire department reflect the diversity that is Oakland. We have firefighters that are all races, men and women with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We value and celebrate our diversity; it is an important fabric in the make-up of our moral compass. It’s evident in our hiring, promotions and retention strategies. It’s how we blend, work and interact in our stations, living together each and every day. The Oakland Fire Department is a very close-knit family and I know from experience that our diversity serves us, and serves us well.

1991 Oakland fire. Photo courtesy of the Oakland Fire Department.

Q: Oakland is known for having big fires in the past. Why is this?

Just like Oakland is the most diverse city by people and population type, it is also the most diverse city by call type. Oakland firefighters respond to emergencies for all of the following: airport, high-rises, wildland urban interface, wildland urban intermix, confined space, an active railroad system, earthquakes, floods, protection of three professional sports teams, older building stock, a marine port where ships come in and out, hazardous materials facilities, and the Bay Bridge. All of these are a very big challenge to train for and protect. When you think about all of those things, there’s no other city in the United States that has the same challenges that Oakland faces.

Wildland firefighting poses some very unique challenges. What we’ve seen from the time of the 1991 Oakland fire, we’ve also seen in the San Diego fire and the fires in Malibu and Topanga Canyon: People build homes close to and in the middle of the wildland. As a result, you have the potential that the wildland can create a danger and a potential for fire spread. We’ve learned a lot of lessons since the 1991 hills fire. These days, we do a very good job of vegetation management and wildfire assessment management. The voters of Oakland established a fund to help us make sure our wildland protection capabilities are strengthened. They help us assure that we have less fuel to burn, that we have clear roads and better access to be able to fight hostile wildland fires. I think we’ve come a very long way. We stand able, willing and ready to protect our citizens from any wildfires that might befall us here in Oakland.

Q: What is your department doing to prepare for the upcoming fire season?

Typically what we do is send out informational brochures to all of our residents, particularly in the hills, telling them about good vegetation management practices. We also give them fire prevention tips such as keeping the fire wood piles away from their homes, trimming the trees away from rooflines and making sure their house is clear of vegetation and fuels that can burn.

We also prepare our firefighters in a practical way. Our firefighters go to Camp Parks every year to do a wildfire training exercise, and to practice what they would do in the case if they had a real wildfire. Also during high fire season we have roving patrols; our firefighters get out the stations and drive the area to look for potential fire or dangerous situations, particularly when winds are high and fuels are dry. The idea is to catch fire emergencies at an early stage so they don’t have an opportunity to get bigger or grow into a problem. Those are a few of things we do to prepare for fire season. These initiatives are about preparedness, prevention and mitigation for our community.

Photo courtesy of the Oakland Fire Department.

Q: Any tips for Oakland residents in fire prevention?

I would encourage everybody to get interested and involved in the CORE program—Citizens of Oakland Respond to Emergencies—it’s a self-help class that the Oakland Fire Department sponsors and delivers. Many people don’t know or realize that in a disaster it can take anywhere up to 48 or 72 hours for firefighters to get to some of our residents homes because we are going to be dealing with significant, major emergencies and hazards. So we want our communities to be as self-sufficient as they can be. The CORE program teaches residents how to do light search and rescue, what to do to secure utilities, how to mobilize their neighborhood in times of disaster and how to protect their neighbors. Oakland’s diversity is also present with this program as we now teach CORE in Chinese and in Spanish.

Other than that, we of course encourage our young residents to learn stop, drop and roll, learn to dial 911, and we encourage them to make sure their parents have an escape plan in case of a fire. Assuring that every home has a working smoke detector is of critical importance. In keeping with Mayor Dellums’ goal to be a Model City, my goal for our residents is to assure that we become a Fire Safe City.

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In Oakland, 76,000 people—that’s 19 percent of the city’s population—live at or below the federal poverty level. This is a statistic that the City of Oakland wants to lower. Part of the solution is bringing attention and awareness to the fact that this type of poverty exists in Oakland.

On Saturday, for the fifth year in a row, the Oakland Community Action Partnership, a City of Oakland agency, sponsored the 5K “Walk to End Poverty.” About 500 people showed up at the Lake Merritt bandstand to join the symbolic walk around the parameter of the lake to show that they care about poverty in Oakland. The walk was hosted in collaboration with the United Way of the Bay Area, and one of the goals of this event’s organizers was to bring together different government agencies and non-profits that work with people in poverty to offer social services to low-income participants.

“We all know someone who can benefit from these services,” said Estelle Clemons, the manager of the Oakland Community Action Partnership, “and someone who we can support.”

Oakland's 5th Annual 5K Walk to End Poverty.

As the walkers put on their free T-shirts and did some last minute stretches, Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” blasted through the speakers. Walkers of every imaginable age and race were present doing jumping jacks, laughing with their friends and drinking water. Everyone was wearing the same t-shirt — yellow, red or white — all with the “Walk to End Poverty” logo. Then Sista Boom, an all female drumming group, kicked off the walk, leading the crowd toward the lake’s walking path. As the stragglers emptied out of the bandstand, one volunteer worker called out, “Ya’ll better catch up, they’re half-way around the lake already.”

Some walkers took the lead, going at a brisk pace, while other partnered up with friends and strolled and chatted. They wound around the curves of the lake, walking past geese, gardens and dodging out of the way of dogs and joggers. One time around was the full 5K.

As people started to arrive back at the bandstand, a celebration was ready for them. Dozens of organizations, including Head Start, Bay Area Legal Aid, Volunteers of America and the Alameda County Food Bank, had set up tables where volunteers gave out pamphlets and told people how to get help for those participants in need social services.

It is important to address the reasons why people are living in poverty and that the organizations at this event are looking at such issues, said Clemons. “We want to give people a leg up instead of just a hand-out,” she said as she worked at one of the tables.

Stilt walkers at the Lake Merritt bandstand.

Oakland City Council member Nancy Nadel, who had joined the walk around the lake, gave a short speech explaining that, in California, a child is born into poverty every five minutes; and that 17.3 percent of children in California live in poverty—1.5 million children. “Something isn’t right here,” Nadel said.

But Saturday’s event wasn’t only about serious issues—it also was a family event to celebrate Oakland. Bands played, like the teen group Pop Lyfe—made up of kids in skinny jeans with colorful shirts playing pop covers. Dance groups performed, including Asian fan dancers, Navajo dancers and the Northern California Soul Strutters—who all danced in unison to old soul hits. Walker Carolyn Wilkins welcomed being able to sit down and watch. “We walked today,” she said. “That’s why I can’t do nothing but sit.”

For more information on what the City of Oakland is doing to address poverty visit Oakland Community Action Partnership’s website.

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For nearly 30 years, a con artist named Alan Young has been living the high life around the Bay Area – on other people’s tabs. He pretends to be what he’s not – a member of a famous Motown group, like the Temptations or the Four Tops – who’s now a wealthy art lover or philanthropist with money to invest. He’s been at it since at least the mid-80s, with short visits to prison in between. In this audio podcast, Tasneem Raja and Nancy López speak to two investigators who had their own run-ins with Alan Young over the last twenty years about how the con works and why it’s so difficult to stop.

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